


thirty minutes north of tokyo

by birdcat



Series: north : south : east : west [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: BRAZIL!, Canon Compliant, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, atsumu is wildly hopelessly in love with him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22763410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdcat/pseuds/birdcat
Summary: It’s not fair, Atsumu thinks, the way things went. That Hinata spent two years pedaling through the streets of Rio De Janeiro before feeling he’d earned his return home. That Kageyama served five aces in a row against France. That Atsumu waited seven years between promising Hinata he’d toss to him and doing it. That he’d waited another six months before pulling him into the sidestreet behind his apartment and pressing their lips together.Atsumu takes Hinata home from Black Jackals tryouts. Hinata takes him to Brazil.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu
Series: north : south : east : west [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653538
Comments: 92
Kudos: 1686
Collections: Haikyuu Fanfiction Archive





	thirty minutes north of tokyo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perennials](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [thirty minutes north of tokyo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24895168) by [JulianAst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulianAst/pseuds/JulianAst)



> this work and its sequel have been translated into [russian.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1801420)  
> this work has now also been translated into [german!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26619727)

They’re in Atsumu’s car, flying down the highway thirty minutes north of Tokyo, when Hinata says, “Thank you.”

Atsumu looks to him. Hinata has his arms folded on the dashboard, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. The tan kissed across his skin from the Brazillian sun hasn’t faded. A shadow is bent over his form as a streetlight passes overhead.

“What for?”

Hinata stretches his arms forward onto the dashboard. Work is written there, in the muscles that pull against his t-shirt sleeves, and in the callouses decorating the palms that he lays flat. Atsumu taps the blinker on. His eyes flick back to the road.

“Everything,” Hinata says.

The offer to take Hinata back to his apartment had been brief, unassuming. It was the Jackals’ fifth day of tryouts, and Atsumu had watched from the balcony with the rest of the team as Hinata slammed ball after ball onto the opposite side of the court. The candidates had only played amongst themselves, today. Atsumu had itched to be down there, to repeat the quick set that the two had begun to discover in the first days of tryouts, heady with the high of their unexpected reunion. Yet, today, Hinata had stood out even without him.

Their coach had talked to Atsumu, after Hinata and the others had disappeared into the locker room. Hinata would be making the team. He would be getting the news in two days. The jersey he’d worn for tryouts was prescription gray. Atsumu knew the next would be black and gold. 

Hinata had piled into his car with sweat beaded onto his skin and his practice jersey bunched up beneath his arm. Atsumu had smiled as he pulled into reverse.  _ You’re only twenty minutes out of my way, anyways. _

Atsumu readjusts his grip on the steering wheel. He is helplessly aware of the smile that has spread wide across his lips. “For everything?”

Hinata shifts in his seat. Even curled up into himself, visible only from the corner of Atsumu’s eye, his presence fills the space. “Even if I don’t make the team,” he says, “you’ve taught me a lot.”

Atsumu looks to him. Hinata is watching the road. He’s taken his hands off of the dashboard, and now sits with his knees tucked against his chest. His fingers, folded into the fabric of his shorts, are bandaged from where he’d earlier taken a powerful spike to the side of his hand. The touch had been a miraculous dive onto his side, onto the floor, keeping the ball in play and enabling his team to score off of it. The legs that had surged back up from the floor in the next split second were now tanned and layered with muscle, but the look in his eyes, shining as he whipped around, had been exactly the same as Atsumu remembered.

That same look is now written on his face, in the dim of Atsumu’s car, softened by the smile tugging on his lips. Atsumu turns his eyes back to the road.

_ What could I have taught you? _

The car swerves a little as Atsumu smiles. “You’re welcome.”

^^^

“You were a ball boy?”

The question is shouted and hoarse. It’s nearly lost in the party’s clamor, somewhere between the roaring music and the sound of Hinata’s fifth beer clinking against the empty wine glass in Atsumu’s hand. Hinata beams up at him and shouts his answer. “When I was fourteen!”

He ends it there, as if it’s a full explanation. They’re in Bokuto’s too-small apartment, bodies uncomfortably close together, bunched into the middle of the living room by a gathering crowd. It’s a sea of acquaintances and high school friends that made it to Tokyo, faces that Atsumu barely remembers. Hinata made the team four days ago, and Bokuto wasted no time in welcoming him. His official jersey, the number 21 across the back, is hung on the wall by the kitchen as if on display at a museum; as if the huddle of people conversing beneath it with glasses of wine in their hands are attending some sort of incredibly celebratory and informal exhibit. They’d popped champagne earlier, Hinata laughing as he splattered Bokuto’s tile floor in foam.

“What?”

“At Shiratorizawa!” Hinata shouts. He’s drunk before anyone else, leaning into the swing of the 80’s pop song that Atsumu’s struggling to drown out. Someone bumps into Hinata from behind. Atsumu steadies him with a hand to the shoulder. The roar of voices is almost impossible to shout over.

“When?”

Hinata takes another swig of his beer.  _ I learned to drink in Brazil, _ he had said earlier, as he’d plucked his third bottle from the cooler. Bokuto had clapped him on the back, Atsumu had mirrored the grin on his face. That was before the crowd and the music and the shouting, and before Hinata had squeezed into the crowd beside Atsumu with a gleam in his eye and his breath brushing his chest.

“Before Nationals!” Hinata shouts it with his eyes shut. He’s leaning into Atsumu’s support now, head nodding along to the music. His shoulder tightens beneath Atsumu’s hand when he brings his bottle back down. Atsumu isn’t clear how they got onto the subject. Someone’s passing voice in the crowd, a remark about high school, something about  _ ball boy  _ and  _ training camp.  _ Atsumu had stalled where he stood and pulled a stumbling Hinata towards him to ask.

“You were a ball boy the first year you went to nationals?”

The grin doesn’t fall from Hinata’s face, even as he shakes his head. “I didn’t get invited!” 

“To what?”

“To the camp!” He raises his bottle to this, as if it’s a toast. His arm gets jostled back down.

“What?”

“To the training camp!” Hinata repeats, even louder, for Atsumu to hear. He says it as if the topic is exhausted, as if  _ training camp  _ and  _ Shiratorizawa  _ are the most obvious things in the world, and they ought to lead Atsumu to some satisfying conclusion. Atsumu is yearning for one, struggling against the image of a Nationals-bound Hinata Shouyou picking up balls for players taller, stronger, luckier than him. Hinata’s smile remains unconcerned even as someone Atsumu doesn’t recognise taps him on the other shoulder.

“What—” Atsumu begins again, as Hinata’s head turns. “What do—”

“Sorry, one second!” And like that Hinata is gone, his smile led away through the crowd by someone Atsumu can only assume Hinata knows. A classmate, Atsumu thinks, or one of Bokuto’s friends, eager to congratulate him. Hinata hadn’t gotten a second alone all evening, being pulled here and there and wrapped in hugs and clapped on the back. The smile hadn’t left his face all evening, either.

Atsumu watches, stock still, and catches a tuft of orange hair passing between the shoulders of their former classmates and teammates as Hinata drifts away. They’re all taller than him, he realizes.

_ You were a ball boy the first year you went to nationals? _

Atsumu brings his wine glass to his lips, but it’s empty.

^^^

They line up together on the court for the first time three months later.

Atsumu is acutely aware of the chasm of the gym’s ceiling above their heads, and the harsh, peculiarly white light of the court that makes distant objects seem near. His shoes squeak against the floor as they settle into a line at the far end of their side. The crowd is already louder than usual.

They’ve practiced this before, all of it. Atsumu has stood at the far line, clad in black and gold and shoulder to shoulder with his teammates, countless times before. He knows that if he looks to his left he’ll see Sakusa’s black curls, Bokuto’s ever-jittery movement just behind him, Oliver’s few centimeters’ advantage over the rest of them. He’ll see the blue linoleum of the floor, the shadows bent out of their unmoving forms, the stands and the referees and their coaches sitting dutifully on the bench. He’s done it all before. The tension of it, the sharpness of the air, is a taste familiar on his tongue.

Atsumu lifts his chin. He knows Kageyama and Ushijima stand on the other side of the court. He can’t see their faces through the net, only a smear of white jerseys and black kneepads and shoulders that sit higher than his. The Adlers have a number of foreigners on their team, faces and names Atsumu doesn’t recognise. Shoes in vibrant colors. Plays he won’t see coming.

Names begin getting rattled off, and Atsumu’s legs tighten. He looks to his right. Sakusa’s curl’s. Bokuto’s fidgeting. Oliver’s careful smile. He’s done this all before.

Hinata’s shoulder brushes against his.

This is the one thing he hasn’t done before. 

He looks to his left. He’s greeted with tufts of orange hair and grin barely being forced down. That same look beams from Hinata’s eyes, when Atsumu dares a glance. It’s the same look he saw in high school; it’s the look he’s certain was shot through the sunlight countless times on a Braziillian beach; it’s the look he was greeted with three months earlier when Hinata stumbled into Jackals tryouts and laid his eyes on Atsumu. 

Atsumu sets his gaze straight. It’s the look he’s sure he’s going to see today, under the white light of the court, when Hinata’s feet hit the ground and the whistle’s cry announces he’s scored off of one of Atsumu’s sets.

_ I’ll toss to you one of these days. _

Discreetly, brushing against the material of their shorts, Atsumu fumbles around for Hinata’s pinky finger. He squeezes it.

^^^

Hinata takes him to Brazil three months later.

It’s to visit Pedro. His first-floor apartment is small, but sunny, and situated only yards from the beach. Atsumu and Hinata were greeted with an open door in a pastel shade of blue, with sand kicked in from the foyer and the twin windows’ shutters hung crooked on sun-bleached hinges. All of it made it easy for Atsumu to imagine Hinata living here. He’d thrown his backpack and his sandals into a corner as they’d entered as if by habit, and raced inside to greet Pedro, leaving Atsumu to stand in the foyer and stare at them wordlessly. As Pedro had shown them around, later, Hinata had groaned at all the things that had changed--a replaced painting on the wall, a new collection of mugs, the bed in Hinata’s old room now in the place where the dresser had stood. Atsumu had just smiled and sat himself down on it.

They had won, in April, against the Schweiden Adlers. It was off of a perfectly timed feint from Hinata’s hand, passed to him by Atsumu. It was the kind of final point that didn’t announce itself. There had been no slamming or missed blocking or acrobatic dives for the ball, only the tap of Hinata’s fingers, the arc over the Adlers’ heads, and the echo of its anticlimactic meeting with the floor.

It was Hinata’s win, above all else. He’d scored the first and the last point in that match, neatly locking himself into a starting position on their roster. It was the place Atsumu had always been waiting for him to fill. Hinata had spent three months floating between the bench and the court before getting to start for that match, as if Kageyama and Ushijima’s presence somehow earned it for him, and wasted no time showing everyone else what Atsumu always knew he was capable of.

Kageyama had pulled Hinata into a hug after the Adlers match had ended, on the side of the court. The cameras were trained on them. Some kind of closure to a high school rivalry that Atsumu pretended he was disinterested in. Atsumu had called Kageyama a  _ goody-two-shoes _ once in high school, when they’d both been invited to Japan’s all-national youth camp. The words had echoed in his head, in that moment, as he’d watched their hug. It was months, years, a lifetime ago that he’d said it, and it didn’t matter, but Atsumu knew that had no right to call him that anymore. Each toss that he’d sent to Hinata that match had felt like a plea. Like a question, asked by the gentle spin of an arcing ball, placed with every ounce of precision and care that he could muster:  _ Will you hit this one for me? _ And Hinata’s answer had come, each time, with the resounding strike of his palm against its surface:  _ Of course.  _

Of course Kageyama had been a goody-two-shoes, Atsumu had thought, standing there dumb and motionless on the emptied court. He’d been tossing to Hinata.

The team had only developed further since then. Their wins came in bursts, in tightly scheduled matches that ran long into the fifth set, saved by Sakusa’s cut shots or Hinata’s ever-climbing reach. There were times when they had the lead, late into such matches, and Atumu would set a ball to Hinata just a bit higher than the ones before. Another question, in the form of a toss. Hinata reached them every time; another answer.

“You’re pulling him higher,” their coach had said to Atsumu once. It was without concern or condemnation; just an observation passed to him in an empty locker room.

Atsumu had said, “I know,” and smiled.

Hinata’s invitation to fly to Brazil with him had come at some point in one of those week-long flurries of practice. He’d suggested it to him mildly, the two of them sprawled across Bokuto’s couch, eyeing the small drunken crowd that had gathered for yet another post-game houseparty.

And Atsumu, goody-two-shoes, hasn’t hesitated before saying, “Of course.”

Beach volleyball is different. It’s like watching Hinata speak Portuguese with Pedro: a foreign language that Atsumu understands just enough of to know just how little he understands. Atsumu feels like the sand sucks his feet down, stalling him; Hinata springs and dives across the beach with the same ease as he does the court. Perhaps with even more. His stance is slightly different, and the gleaming look he gives Atsumu is slightly different, too--tinged with amusement, at the sight of him toiling in the sand--but the urgency with which he plays is the same. His receives go even longer, Atsumu thinks, and he trusts himself to throw his body even further when there’s a beach beneath him instead of linoleum. He snaps greedily at the chance to set, too, making the most of each second touch and watching stock-still and wide-eyed as Atsumu launches himself at the balls he tosses up. Almost as if he’s got something to show Atsumu, something to prove _._ Hinata’s tosses are good, and he grins at him helplessly each time he spikes one. Atsumu imagines the words in his head: _Look, Atsumu, I can set too_. He lets himself have the thought.

It’s a slip into unreality, almost; Atsumu has spent the past six months trying to piece together exactly what it was Hinata had been doing in Brazil, and now he’s here. He’d only been given the vaguest of clues--the foreign-sounding name of a player, someone who showed Hinata a particular trick; an anecdote about his work as a delivery boy; the vague retelling of a late-night misadventure, shared at one of Bokuto’s get-togethers.

The last kind of hint always sticks in Atsumu’s mind: Hinata speaks briefly, here and there, about drinking and partying in Brazil, the kind of story filled with amusing details and always left ambiguous at the end. Hinata would mention some comical, drunken blunder he’d had late at night on his way to some stranger’s house and then laugh, and the wine-buzzed room would laugh and nod along and no one would presume to ask who he’d been with or where he’d spent the night.

It’s the acceptance that Hinata had grown up, over there, and that the gritty details of exactly how or when or in whose bed are his to withhold, the same way the account of how he’d learned to receive like  _ that _ is also his to simply grin at and refuse to explain. In Atsumu’s mind it’s also the irrefutable evidence that Hinata had had something to  _ get over  _ while he was over there. Or, rather, that the lingering touch Atsumu had sworn he’d seen three months ago in Hinata’s mid-court handshake with Kageyama hadn’t been purely imagination. Or, better, that Hinata’s hints at drunken nights in bed with strangers and the way his face shutters at the mention of Kageyama’s name have something to do with each other.

For being in Brazil, Atsumu still doesn’t have a clear image of what exactly Hinata  _ did _ here. A young couple takes them out for drinks on their first night, to a bar on the boardwalk that rises above the beach courts. It’s a bar that Hinata must have frequented, because it’s not even twenty minutes before he’s got a small gathering of locals around him--friends and friends-of-friends who had seen him on TV playing volleyball since he’d left, and now throw questions at him in Portuguese and English. Atsumu picks out the words  _ Japan  _ and  _ television  _ and  _ volleyball _ and  _ serve. _ Hinata answers to the best of his ability, tilting and scratching his head and throwing sideward grins at Atsumu when something stumps him. The couple that brought them there flank him on either side of the booth, theatrically pantomiming as they explain something Atsumu can only assume is one of Hinata’s more memorable televised plays. Hinata’s laughing along.

“It’s good,” one man says to Atsumu, who’s lingering at the fringes of the crowd and looking on. He speaks English. “Hinata works hard.”

Atsumu can only nod. He’s nursing a drink one of Hinata’s friends ordered for him, something with mango and rum that sits heavy in his stomach. He considers the words.  _ It’s good. Hinata works hard. _

He wonders how good Hinata’s Portuguese is, exactly. How much his friends here knew of his plans to return to Japan and try out for the professional leagues. Had they awaited his success, after he’d left? Had he told them how desperately he wanted it? Perhaps he had told those anonymous late-night companions about the time he was fourteen, nationals-bound, picking up balls at the training camp he hadn’t been invited to. Or perhaps telling them hadn’t been necessary. Perhaps they’d seen it, instead, in the look in his eyes and the urgency of his swing.

“You’re his friend? You help him?”

Atsumu looks to the man. He’s tall, bearded, smiling across the bar at Hinata’s umpteenth burst of laughter. One of the players they’d narrowly defeated that day as the sun sank into the beach. Atsumu had seen through his blocks, sending a ball arcing high behind him into Hinata’s palm for the final point. “Yeah,” Atsumu says.

The man claps a hand against Atsumu’s back after considering him for a long moment. “Thank you.”

^^^

Atsumu wakes up before him.

Hinata’s bedroom in Brazil is warm in the morning. They must have left the windows open behind the curtains. The sunlight streams in with flecks of pollen and the distant sound of music.

Atsumu traces a fingertip carefully up the curve of Hianta’s lower back. He’d stumbled in here with him, late at night, muttering sweetness into Hinata’s neck as he slipped him into his arms. They’d tumbled onto the mattress to the sound of Hinata’s laughter and the rustle of Atsumu peeling his shirt off of him.

Their initial kisses had been sloppy, half-drunk, Atsumu curving into him with his every ounce of concentration the second they slipped from the main street into the alleyway behind the apartment. Music had rang loud into the night, floating up from the boardwalk. A siren had cried in the distance as Hinata pressed himself between Atsumu’s thighs. How they’d made it back into his bedroom Atsumu didn’t know.

Hinata’s skin is soft, tanned, the lines of his back spread out before Atsumu where his bedsheet has slipped off of him. Atumu wants to kiss every inch of it; remembers kissing every inch of it, to the tune of Hinata’s stuttering breath and his hands tangled in his hair. His fingertips hover over his shoulderblades now, where sunlight has gathered in pools of white.

It’s not fair, Atsumu thinks, the way things went. That Hinata spent two years pedaling through the streets of Rio De Janeiro before feeling he’d earned his return home. That Kageyama served fives aces in a row against France. That Atsumu waited seven years between promising Hinata he’d toss to him and doing it. That he’d waited another six months before pulling him into a sidestreet and pressing their lips together.

Atsumu stirs Hinata awake. Selfishly. Hinata rolls onto his back, into the space between them. He stills, blinks twice, and rubs at his eyes before setting them on Atsumu. Atsumu waits, and he grins.

It’s not fair, Atsumu thinks, that Hinata had thanked him, as they’d flown down the highway, thirty minutes north of Tokyo.

Atsumu rolls on top of him, an arm braced on either side. The bedsheet billows and settles around them. He kisses him once, twice, on the mouth, on the jaw, on the crest of his cheek. Hinata laughs and grabs onto him, warm hands against the bare skin of his back. His head tilts back when Atsumu presses his nose to his forehead; his breath hitches when Atsumu kisses him there.

“Thank you,” Atsumu whispers against his skin.

Hinata’s giggles die down; his hands still against Atsumu’s chest. “What for?”

Atsumu leans in, tucks his brow into the curve of Hinata’s neck. “Everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> hahahahahahaahahahahaha hahehehehehehe
> 
> i'm [summersugawara](https://twitter.com/summersugawara) on twitter!
> 
> thank you elmo i.e. twitter user [nikiforcvs](https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs) i.e. ao3 user [perennials](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/) for getting me into atsuhina and then pinning me down there and physically beating me with good content until i wrote this
> 
> kudos and comments make me cry tears of joy thats not a joke
> 
> thank you for reading!!!


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